A couple of notes...

In honor of the World Cup, check out this article in the NY Times which reports on the Amsterdam Ajax team camps for boys. The author, Michael Sokolove, does a good job of noticing how the overarching cultural lean toward pragmatism drives the process...

I asked Martin Jol, the coach of Ajax's first team, if it was difficult for him to nurture young players knowing he would lose them just as their talent blossomed. "I think that is the purpose of Ajax, to develop players and bring them up to the first team as young as possible," he answered. "And then we sell them, not for peanuts but for a lot of money."

The more substantial criticism is that Ajax has become too mercantile and coldblooded. "I feel like they've lost some of the spirit of the place," John Hackworth, the former U.S. youth coach, told me. "What made them so great, these heroes they create, now go on to stardom so quickly somewhere else."

It's a balancing act of measuring the kids' performance and potential, and at the end of each year there's a no-holds-barred assessment. Every spring the kids who don't make it get sent away and are not allowed to return, and when one of the teens is asked how he feels about his coach at the camp getting fired, he says, "The football world is a hard world. He has made the decision to send boys away. Now he knows how it feels." It's well worth the read, and gives insight into why Dutch ministries to youth which try to embody and teach Matthew 5 face some tough challenges...

Then click on this article on DutchNews to see the result of giving folks too much space. It'll make you rethink all those times when you said, "I just wish everybody would leave me alone!"

Two bits...

Wondering how to keep a ministry focused and energized? Check out this NYTimes article by a former VP at Microsoft to discover a couple of things to avoid (like infighting and a lack of innovation). It's a good reminder that we always need to be preparing for the road ahead...

Then here's a great Lent article by Ross Douthat who wonders if the American experience of religion is turning into a 'kind of mysticism [which] is more likely to be a pleasant hobby than a transformative vocation.' His thought is that an aimless spirituality cheats us out of the 'promise of religious practice: that at any time, in any place, it's possible to encounter the divine, the revolutionary and the impossible - and have your life completely shattered and remade.' Food for thought as we approach Easter...

The genius of mashup...

Click here to be taken to a video/music mashup site that for my money borders on pure genius. And here's the application for everyone involved in reaching the next generations: what are the elements in your current environment that could be re-assembled to achieve something amazing and new? I think valuable bits and pieces are everywhere, so the question becomes whether we're creative enough to put them together to achieve a uniquely effective end result...

Another perspective...

Remembering the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz (click here to read - registration with NYTimes website required)...

For a quick browse...

Click here to see a recap of the Barna Group's studies from 2009. The bottom line is that, well, things are looking great for spirituality in America but not so much for the Christian faith. Hmmm...

Then you can click here to read Russ Douthat's article in the NY Times on the need for open and free dialogue about religious beliefs: "If you treat your faith like a hothouse flower, too vulnerable to survive in the crass world of public disputation, then you ensure that nobody will take it seriously. The idea that religion is too mysterious, too complicated or too personal to be debated on cable television just ensures that it never gets debated at all." Applying this conviction to youth ministry could lead to some very engaging (and I think significant) conversations.

Over here is a report from a Disney-funded study of tweens in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain. The goal was to understand the next generation (the study calls them XD's), and here are some of the study's conclusions:

"Fundamentally different to previous generations due to its digital upbringing, Generation XD - children born between 1995 and 2001 to parents of Generation X - has witnessed more technological developments than any other generation and never known life without digital entertainment, mobile phones or social media channels...What's interesting though, is how they are embracing both cutting edge technology and traditional family values in their approach to life. While David Beckham does inevitably get a mention, fame and celebrity are secondary to family and they aspire to be vets and teachers rather than singers and celebrities, which is both surprising and encouraging. Indeed, Generation XD is remolding the traditional definition of youth as we know it."

'Remolding the traditional definition of youth as we know it'? Seems kinda strong, but read it for yourself to see if it's justifiable.

And then finally here's a brief mention of Miep Gies, the Dutch woman who hid Anne Frank and preserved her diary (without reading it) hoping against hope that the young girl would return home to claim it. She passed away on Monday at the age of 100 years and was the last survivor of the group who hid the Frank family. An excellent reminder that sometimes it only takes a couple of people to change the world forever (click here for her main website)...

Signs of the times...

In this NY Times op-ed piece, Ross Douthat critiques what he calls the 'high-handed, often undemocratic approach to politics that Europe’s leaders have cultivated in their quest for unity.' The way he sees it, the European political establishment works by forging a consensus only within itself and then assumes it can handle any populist backlash that develops (like the recent ban on minarets in Switzerland). The result of such an approach, says Douthat, is likely to be a 'long period of tension, punctuated by spasms of violence, that makes the Continent a more unpleasant place without fundamentally transforming it.' It's an insightful piece for those wondering which dynamics are shaping the future of Europe...and the absence of one particular societal institution should be glaring...

Ahem...

A couple of articles worth passing along...

First, now that the massive collider near Geneva is firing up and on the way to smashing atoms for all its worth (here's the story in the Toronto Star), check out this NY Times article on the problems they've been having getting it up and running (like a bird dropping crumbs on a critical part). These difficulties have led some physics theorists to posit that a 'malign influence from the future' is at work - seriously. Makes me wonder if reading this article together could lead to the greatest small group discussion ever...

Then second, for more straightforward types, this commentary on a study released earlier in the year which showed that most children raised unaffiliated with a religion later choose to join one. You can find the original study released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life here, and notice that most people who started attending religious services later in life said they went because their spiritual needs were not being met. Sounds like a wonderful opening for some intentional communication by strategic church leaders...